house hunting

So we started looking at houses here. The plan was to look in NC in a few years but we found ourselves dragging and not wanting to move very quickly there. Its hard to move from the Bay Area. Especially when you have your whole network of support here. We have the wonderful Catherine, The Y, the church, our friends and our lives here at the moment. Hard to think about leaving that and rebuilding it all. Our friends have become our families and work is grand for both of us. Busy but enjoying it!

With the real estate market going down its a good time to be in a situation to buy so we started looking near us. So far found a few wee gems. A lot sadly are banked owned. You can see where the owners put so much into them hardwood floors, granite kitchens etc and couldn't keep them when the interest rates went up. Some are empty, some are not. The ones not empty tend to be rented as the folks who had bought them were buying as an investment but couldn't keep them as the costs went up.

So after work we went looking with our wonderful friend and realtor Ann - http://agent.interorealestate.com/Splash.aspx?ID=957&clicksource=AgentAchieve
Who helped us whiz around 6 houses one night with wee lad in tow. By the end the wee man was laughing having lots of fun as he turned on and off lights in each house. He LOVES turning on and off lights. The way he can already work the alarm clock radio and tivo remote at a year scares me. Guess hes an engineer at heart.

We figure we will look and if we find one that makes us happy but not too house poor then we'll move. We're in a lucky position with having a large 3 bedroom right now that we rent so we don't HAVE to move. However the draw of having our own wee garden that munchkin could run around and also the dreams of a shed or garage for storage make us smile a lot. That and having somewhere to put a jacuzzi..